A Call for eBay Bounty Hunters

By consumerist.comFebruary 14, 2006

While I think we can all agree that what happened to Chris Dotson—getting scammed out of over three grand on eBay and Paypal—sucks to high heaven, he raises a more interesting point at the end of his post: Is there a market for a third-party eBay scam collection service?

Consider Dotson’s case: Even though he won the PayPal dispute, he still only received a $175 credit—Paypal just doesn’t cover anything more than that. If a collection agency went after the scammer, even with typical 40 to 50% collection fees, Dotson would still be up at least another $1,500.

Who’s going to start the first eBay detective agency? Maybe one of those ‘We sell your stuff on eBay’ stores could do it on the side.